Have you met Anna Dart?

Oct 02, 2013

Meet Anna Dart, Barcelona based painter and illustrator...

Well, first I would like to confess that I am not a human, I have got watercolor in my veins. And the color of my eyes is constantly changing, you should see me in person. I am young but brave enough to provocatively paint sexuality and sensitiveness, personal distance, and melancholy. Interested in psychological portrait I lead to show different characters with their fantasies and passions. When I painted for the first time some of the quite intimate works, not the academic ones of the "nu style" that I was taught to paint at fine-art studio, but some that show the deep-inside desires, I thought my parents should have better not see them :)

(Watercolour "One day after rain" after photograph by Gonzalo Bénard, by Anna Dart)

With some simple watercolor strokes I tend to create the profound images that make the spectator to reflect and be motivated. How to define love? Or how to say what the sadness is or a touch? When I am not able to find the words for unexplainable things or some impetuous feelings, I just paint them. While working I do my best to make a picture the most realistic, the most emotional, but at the same time I admit that it will never become alive, it is just a paper and colors. But it can make the spectator look inside and realize if he lives deeply the moment, if he is intimidated by his entire world, fantasies, tears and pain. The main postulate of my works is that being sincere, being weak and simultaneously strong, being yourself - it is worth of taking a risk.

(Watercolour "Absorbing" after photograph by AR Pairet, by Anna Dart)

Why do I use watercolor? Say, it reminds me my favorite rain: cap, cap, cap… you never know where the next drop kisses you making your heart beat excitedly. Watercolor is ambiguous, as perfect as absolutely imperfect. Why? It is accidental, does not resist drawbacks and doubts, it is water that can disappear in a moment, it is a breath that never recurs, it is an instant, an emotion, a mistake itself, inimitable, irrevocable, permanent. You just need to know to love it and to open an umbrella in time.

What helps me to create?

Photography, if to be more precise the black and white one, which is strict, but truthful; definitely art-house films, world literature and the poetry (actually yesterday after my French lesson I spent no less than 3 hours losing and finding me in the library!), the music ("Sweet dreams", why not?), the passion, tenderness, delicacy, and an inward pure aspiration for achieving something eternal, transcendental and ideal like the universe, which in my way goes all around and around the emotions

I am a girl with a great desire to make people watching at each other, contemplate the eyes, lips, shoulders, hair in a slowly way, like you can do watching some old films. Stand still for a minute and say, "Wow... It is a wonderful face, I am almost in love. It shouldn't inevitably be the typical fashion beauty, but the great charm of the person it transmits to you." This is the magic. Each person has its own colors. One of my favorite colors is a sleepy lazy thoughtful grey and also the elegant night ink colour, although I am convinced that if you ask about it again in 5 years, I would say another thing. Changes.

Unbound: Did you start by drawing people in somewhat erotic scenarios or was this more of an evolvement towards it?

AD: Well, I would say that I wanted to find out if I dare to do it or not. A simple challenge. I remember a common talk with one of my friends on a way home which started with some hooligan words: "What if.....?" (laughing)

(Watercolour "Please be kind to me", by Anna Dart)

Unbound: Do you work from life, or from photographs or from imagination?

AD: I use mixed technic :) But I should admit that I've got two paintings of mine that I love most, I based them on the Gonzalo Bénard and JamArt Photography.

Unbound: Do you often know your subjects?

AD: If I paint the portraits of real people, in general yes. In case I paint some celebrities, I talk to them through the Internet, get some feed back, like from a model Constance Jablonski, photographer Clement Louis, singer Pablo Alboran who I hope to get to know soon during his concert in Barcelona in October. Singers Maia Vidal and Ricardo Macedo I painted I know personally. And without doubt, my answer is Yes as far my self-portraits are concerned!

Unbound: Considering the more exposed or vulnerable aspect to your work, do you think its critiqued differently than any other subject matter? For example, are people looking at your paintings with a more personal lens?

AD: Well, I guess, I try to elaborate my works depending on the public. For my recent individual exhibition in the Eurostars BCN Design Hotel I chose watercolors from my collection that are the most tolerant for all the ages and cultures. In contrast for some exact galleries and Magazines I may be as frivolous as I wish. And I do lead to think if the erotic image is exquisite, you won't be ashamed to demonstrate it and be understood. The only suspicious thing that can come across the minds of the spectators: What is happing in the life of such a young lady that she doesn't paint landscapes as she did before and get on to the unconcealed passionate scenes? (laughing) I say the body is the loveliest nature field and a mountain to walk through and investigate. Painting for me is a travel and... a kind of making love.

The artist, Anna Dart.

Big thanks to Anna for contributing to Unbound! Check out more of her beautiful work here and her facebook page here.